Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the protest era of the early 1970s, a gripping novel of a power, corruption, injustice, courage, and hope—and one tenacious young man whose determination to overturn the system holds unexpected consequences for his own life.
If you had a chance to change the world, do something really big even if you knew it would change you, would you do it?
In the spring of 1970, Steve Logan, like thousands of other college students across America, takes to the streets to protest authority and the Vietnam War. Fueled by a strong sense of moral justice, he wants to make the world better—a belief his girlfriend Roxy, a medical student, passionately shares. Weeks before his graduation from Brown, Steve’s life is upended when National Guard troops kill four students at Kent State University. Then, he meets a reform-minded cop from New York City who convinces Steve that to change the system, he has to get involved.
Eager to make a difference, Steve decides to give up law school and join the Providence Police Department. While the rookie cop with an Ivy League degree knows that change is difficult, the reality of fighting the establishment soon overwhelms him. His education makes him an outsider, and his honesty makes him a threat to the corrupt cops who use the power of their badge to inflict brutality and extort. And the job is taking a toll at home. His college friends think he’s a traitor to the cause and even Roxy, the woman he loves, has begun to pull away.
But Steve isn’t going to give up. Devising a dangerous plan to radically shake up the system, he begins to collect the evidence to take his enemies down . . . unless they take him out first.
Infused with the color and atmosphere of the early nineteen seventies—a time of youthful enthusiasm, idealism, and dreams that would indelibly transform a nation, Wild World, is a compelling story of one man and a generation that speaks to us today, reminding us of the power each individual has to change the world, to create a just, caring, and more equitable society for all of us.